What the Wall Street Protest is About

It’s not left versus right. It’s the system.

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Complete entry

Posted by post-post  on  10/11  at  11:38 AM

(though it isn’t even midday yet, I’ve commented too many times already. So once more)

You are correct on all points, Mike; however there is no real system; as ‘civilization’ is actually controlled barbarism, capitalism is actually controlled economic chaos—and economics is everything we do. Communists (high case ‘C’) call capitalism “corporate anarchy” when the reality is more complex & complicated.
Will spare you another rant.
You are right that it isn’t Democrat v Republican, and many here would agree our politics are outmoded to begin with irregardless of Dem v GOP. Yet it is almost unbearable that another outmoded GOP ticket could win the outmoded presidential election next year and preside (that is what a president does: preside) over 4 or 8 years of outmoded… well some of us don’t want to spoil our dinner in advance, it gives one the dry heaves.
We want an alternative to the GOP/Dem duopoly, but it may be too early—or in the case of next year’s election—too late to at this time change the situation substantively.
I have a bad conscience already, don’t want to worsen it by doing anything to cause Obama to lose, thereby electing another Cheney-Bush administration or something even less appetizing. UNLESS things change so rapidly during the next year that the duopoly is negated.
Of course it is what we do to change it; unfortunately (for those who aren’t luddites), America is old-fashioned in many ways, and too new in others. Europe for all its faults is well over a thousand years old, while America isn’t even 250 years old.
To cut it short, this isn’t to be defeatist; I went to an occupywallstreet rally yesterday, it was encouraging—all the people were positive. But again, doing anything to aid a GOP presidential hopeful-cum-candidate by lessening Obama’s chances is something to be avoided like the plague. IMO no Heaven exists, yet perhaps a hell does exist on Earth, something similar to Dante’s levels of Hell, wherein one can drop to a lower hell.
It doesn’t appear one would be able to go in the opposite direction

Posted by iPan  on  10/11  at  12:00 PM

By the end of the decade, people will realize that the power that allows them to mobilize these protests, the social media platforms, the livestreams, the ubiquitous internet, can also perform all the functions of government.

Government will not go easily into the night, but it will go.

This won’t be the last “protest”. The establishment will attempt to adapt and co-opt it. They will try to install politicians that appear to be aligned with the movement.

The WH, for example, has tried to just that, without literally endorsing the protest itself, but stating that the policy changes they want are the same as the protesters.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/david-plouffe-on-protesters-herman-cain-senate-jobs-vote/

This could go on for a couple years, but people will continue to protest at ever increasing frequency.

Look at Egypt. They are still protesting. This cycle will continue to compress itself into shorter and shorter cycles, until everyone gets that our ultra-connected social media technologies is better at governance.

Sort of like the end of Rudy Rucker’s “Hylozoic”, where people just suddenly realize they have outgrown government.

Posted by Matthew Treder  on  10/11  at  01:35 PM

Wall Street precipitated the U.S. economic meltdown and the current jobless “recovery” in 2008. And we’re only now protesting? Seems like that horse left the barn quite awhile ago.

Posted by Kris Notaro  on  10/11  at  03:21 PM

Great article: I went to the D.C. Occupation and this is what is saw:

http://krisnotaro2.wordpress.com/

Posted by post-post  on  10/11  at  03:31 PM

“And we’re only now protesting?”

(shouldn’t comment after posting so much today, however a political junkie can’t help it—and politics is now junky to the max; how might it get worse?: you don’t want to know)
This goes back to overestimation of progressivism in America: the eastern seaboard & west coast are fairly progressive—the interior is not. If academics rely on indicators from college towns and other bubble communities, that might explain it.
BTW, it isn’t conservatism per se I object to, it is the ludicrous anachronism that is nonstarter even by its own standards. One would have to be senescent to take today’s politics seriously. It is no more than a travesty of politics to the point ‘conservatives’ must deep-down know it is… they simply don’t know what to do, how quickly to change.
Ipan is correct things are changing, but it is what we do now—and I can’t even stand attempting to communicate with the majority of people. Can scarcely wait for robots to advance.
However everything is fairly good if you exclude communication—that is to say the lack of communication.

Posted by post-post  on  10/11  at  05:00 PM

Mike,
reason I bring up the Heartland is because of growing up near you, in Hicksville. Took the LL train to a job at a shop on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn; thought races/ethnicities in America were more or less integrated, as they are in NY; thought the whole world was quasi-liberal, as NY is. Then after moving out west it became apparent there are many in America to the ‘Right’ of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. Of course the majority are not, but even if the percentage is say 12 percent, it is far too high.

Posted by iPan  on  10/11  at  05:58 PM

I wish Clay Shirky would do an article about this, I haven’t heard from him in a while.

Posted by Andrew LaFleur  on  10/11  at  08:31 PM

“It is not sustainable and must be overthrown.” Ooooo! Guess who just made the FBI’s Watch List? Ha! Ha!
I have been waiting for these protests for years! Yes!
I must disagree on one point. An axe is a tool and a weapon. How would you weild it? The system is amoral. It is a tool that has been weilded without moral. Being that leaders reflect the lead, it is we that lack the morality. Blaming the system deflects accountability to the inanimate. Conversely, yet refreshingly, these protests represent a rising tide of morality. Secular morality. Thank God! (ROTFLOL)
You still wrote a great article. Thank you.

Posted by iPan  on  10/11  at  10:30 PM

nyanyanya
lolcat

Give me solidarity or give me….

Youtube

Posted by iPan  on  10/11  at  11:56 PM

I’ll see all of you on the other side.

Best of luck.

Posted by Frank  on  10/12  at  01:27 AM

Caught Occupy Atlanta.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
You won’t believe your ears.
You won’t believe your ears.

Posted by post-post  on  10/12  at  02:56 PM

New England has the rosiest prospects as far as is known; NE has the highest concentration of progressive (naturally, whatever ‘progressive’ means in each community) locations, in closer proximity to each other than in other regions. The Bay Area of CA has a more positive outlook as well; plus some other areas of the Northwest, one might suppose—without actually living in those locales.
However the interior doesn’t have a whole lot, there’s not much besides ABM:

Austin, Boulder, Madison.

Unless things have changed faster than one knows. Yet such does not appear to be the case, the old-timers like their old fashioned politics & religion; it gives them warm and fuzzy feelings. Kumbaya for Rightists.

Posted by Giulio Prisco  on  10/14  at  06:58 AM

Re “My hope is that whatever comes next will retain the vigor and vitality of a market economy to drive innovation and reward productivity, but will guard against the imbalance of power and inherent injustice of US-style capitalism, and will value people more than profits.

Well said Mike! This is my hope too. I would add that there is no “market economy” now, but a de-facto monopoly on power and money enforced by collusion between large governments, large corporations, and large banks.

Posted by John M. Bowman Sr.  on  10/14  at  10:32 AM

Friends they say the Occuply movement lacks goals and demands here are my ideas, Pass them on Feel free to share
We the People of the United States of America on this date 13, October 2011 ask the Congress of the United States to introduce Legislation for Constitutional amendments for the following grievances
1. The House of Representatives and the United States Senate will no longer add earmarks to any pending legislation.
2. The Congress will not receive any hard or soft monies from pacs or other corporate Officials either directly or indirectly.
3. The Congress will pass an amendment to balance the Federal Budget.
4. Social Security and Medicare will be funded and streamlined to provide for the senior citizens and disabled without any disruption of benefits or amount of health care and amount of Social Security Income
5. Congress will pass legislation to Tax the wealthiest of Americans at an amount of no less than 35-40%
6. Bank and Corporation Security Commission laws shall be revamped to protect the investors not the investment houses and the banks
7. Congress shall pass legislation to place a cap on Corporation Executives salaries and benefits packages. And stricter SEC regulations of CEO activities.
8. Congress will pass legislation to stop the illegal inflow of immigrants from foreign nations and stricter laws to deport those who don’t follow the proper immigration processes of our nation.
9. Congress will pass a universal health care law which protects all citizens of the United States without the regard to race, income, or nationality
10. The Congress shall pass an amendment limiting the terms of office of all Government officials to 8 years to include the Supreme Court of the United States

Posted by CygnusX1  on  10/14  at  03:50 PM

Occupy Springfield!

http://wr3n.tumblr.com/post/11441406894/occupyspringfield

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/15  at  06:36 AM

@iPan What will ensure that these new Internet-enabled forms of governance will do a better job of contributing to the common good than the current, albeit indeed flawed and possibly disappearing, ones.

Remember that the current post-feudal forms of governance were not imposed from above by aliens: they themselves are the product of self-organisation. What’s to stop the same thing happening to the new ones?

Marx got this right: power and wealth tend to concentrate. Whatever the technology. Only concerted determination to compensate for this natural tendency will ensure that the new forms of governance that are emerging will perform better, not worse, than the existing ones. I like the occupy movements more because they (currently at least) seem to embody such determination, more than because they are the harbinger of new technology-enabled forms of governance.

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  12:56 PM

@iPan What will ensure that these new Internet-enabled forms of governance will do a better job of contributing to the common good than the current, albeit indeed flawed and possibly disappearing, ones.

The very nature of networking itself :D

I want to share this from a friend of mine, who commented on the revolution this morning:

this is a different revolution - very different and strange- social networks have completely shifted the power paradigm of guns/money that has stood since the founding of Ur- but even the protesters using these new tools haven’t fully grasped it yet

instead of guns and money social networks have handed the power to the most POPULAR ideas and movements-

no one guesses it yet but money and guns are now OBSOLETE in sociopolitics! a popular growing movement needs no money! money is a means of procuring media and human resources to drive the movement- with social networks you already have global media saturation and if you need TV/print you don’t need to pay because if your cause is popular people with TV/print resources will DONATE them to you- instantly- as you need them- the same for food/supplies/intel - I have actually heard geezers on Fox news say that the Occupy protests will dissapate when the cold hits- they don’t realize that social media allows a crowd to refresh itself by rotation- and shelter provided exactly when and where it is needed from a simple tweet-

GUNS are obsolete- a military or police state needs PEOPLE to build/maintain/operate weapons and execute battle plans- in the past your soldiers would be state propaganda fed minions- but now soldiers and police officers are free citizens like everyone else- and they have mobiles with social media apps - if an old corrupt power really tries to pull something like Tiananmen Square today many of the soldiers would be sabatouers and moles- hackers from inside and out would cripple their intel and comms- millions would be ready for monkey warfare at targeted locations by just a few-

for the last few years every populist uprising that has used the new social media has resulted in an explosion through the network- vastly amplifying the political impact- wherever people PUSH the network RESPONDS and accelerates it - the Occupy protesters and Wall St both still think this is the powerless masses complaining to the powerful- but it’s really the NEW power coming to arrest the reigns from the OLD

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  01:20 PM

Once again, I feel I must remind people to study Marshal McLuhan and Clay Shirky.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/15  at  04:44 PM

Personally I don’t support this “Occupy Wall Street” movement for an number of reasons.  First of all, I don’t blame capitalism for our economic crisis.  Instead, I blame the people running the system and ourselves for being to comfortable with spending prior to all this. 
Secondly, I have been listening to what the protesters have been saying and I do not like what I’ve been hearing.  They have been says things like “Communism is available to us.  Socialism is available to us”. This deeply sickens me since history has shown several times that governments who have adopted these systems are some of the most repressive governments ever to exist.  The irony of it is that only to kinds of people existed in those governments; the very rich and the very poor.  There was never any equality in those systems.  While on this topic; I’ve recently listened to an interview with a Wall Street protester who was carrying a Chinese flag.  When asked about this he stated that China is where “its at” and that he lost his job because he wanted to transition from a man to a woman.  does he actually think the Chinese government would be more tolerant of that?  If anything they would be happy to lop off a few other body parts or better yet open fire on protesters.  So it is disturbing to think that these protesters are willing to adopt systems that takes away their individual freedoms for an equality that doesn’t even exist in those systems.
Thirdly, the statement in the last sentence about this movement not being a violent one is unfortunately becoming increasingly untrue.  This “Occupy Wall Street” movement is spreading world wide and so far their are riots in Rome because of it <http://news.yahoo.com/rioters-hijack-rome-protests-police-fire-tear-gas-192119627.html>.
Fourth and finally, this movement is more of a mob appeal where the mass of protesters are acting mostly on emotions and using little to no logic and reason. I don’t know what kind of system you want, but I advise that you look and history and think about the long term consequences of your actions before following an idea that sounds good hear and now.   

Posted by post-post  on  10/15  at  05:50 PM

No,
they are right to rebel as they are being groomed (manipulated) into being anachronisms, the protesters know or sense there is no future in the rube world they don’t own. You are a Herman Cain telling the protesters to:
“play yo’ harmonica, Son.”

Ah gots mahn ‘n’ knows mah place- so dontcha get uppity.

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  06:17 PM

@Christian Corralejo

You echo many of the talking points brought up by MSM and polarized commenters.

Let me try to address them one by one as best I can.

1) “I don’t blame capitalism for our economic crisis”

Neither do I, and neither do many protesters. Our economic system isn’t capitalism, and it isn’t a free market. You could call it Crony Capitalism, or Oligarchy, or Plutocracy. Whatever you call it, the point is that while meritocracy is certainly an ideal with a lot of merit (!), it isn’t the system we have in truth. We do not live in world where individual merit and ability determine a person’s success in life. The game is rigged. The rules are created by people who buy the politicians to favor them and their families. In other words, the majority of us (the 99%) start the game with a handicap.

2) “They have been saying things like ‘Communism is available to us. Socialism is available to us.’

There are certainly Communist and Socialist Idealists among the protesters. There are also Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans, and Democrats. I even watched a guy on livestream who identified himself as an ‘anarcho-syndicalist’ (not something you hear too often from mainstream America - who almost always define themselves on the Con/Lib or Repub/Demo axis). The point being, this crowd is diverse. It is the 99%, so it is to be expected that there will be a large number of different ideologies present. This movement does not represent any single perspective. I have seen since it’s inception an attempt to “paint” it with a particular viewpoint, especially a liberal/democratic/socialist one. And while that element is there too, there’s no denying that, that’s not what this is really about.

3) “the statement in the last sentence about this movement not being a violent one is unfortunately becoming increasingly untrue”

This movement has gone global. There have been a small handful of isolated cases of violence. By far, the majority of violence has been instigated by the police. There are also numerous cases of police paid provocateurs that blend into the crowd and then incite violence, giving the police the incentive they need to crack down. Just because someone is dressed in plain clothes, does not mean they are an actual protester. This has been admitted to by certain groups (conservative magazines/publications - their admission is on record and online). It would seem some of the more extremist Tea Partiers are hot and heavy to discredit this movement in any way they can, and they will stoop to any low to do so.

4) “this movement is more of a mob appeal where the mass of protesters are acting mostly on emotions and using little to no logic and reason”

This last one seems like little more than a character attack against the protesters. I don’t know what else to say then, “Generalize much?” So far, I’ve been utterly blown away by this movement.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/15  at  06:32 PM

@ iPan
Thanks for making those clarifications for me and sorry for my forth point sounding to much like a sweeping generalization.  I just hope these protests don’t go down the wrong way.

Posted by CygnusX1  on  10/15  at  06:52 PM

@ Christian..

Apart from some unrest in Rome, the Occupy movement protests around the world today have been very peaceful indeed. The way to keep it peaceful is to permit protesters freedom of speech and for politicians to respect this and ensure their police forces do not antagonize. There is no reason why todays historic example of peaceful worldwide protests cannot continue and become commonplace, and I hope they do continue.

However, as authorities do awaken and realise the “gravity” of feelings around these protests worldwide, I guess there will eventually be intervention leading to unrest and some violence for both sides. The path towards change is inherently provocative.

There must be many socialist idealists involved with various parties associated with the ongoing protests, yet there are also just as many who do not advocate Communism. It is a general misconception that all who protest against the status quo must naturally be anti-Capitalism? This is not the case.

Posted by post-post  on  10/15  at  08:34 PM

Wrong way? in a way it will: casualties always occur;
though a definite trend since WWII has been away from mass violence, we haven’t evolved far enough away from brutishness, so random violence exists in every city & town. Occupywallstreet will suffer a few casualties at not a rate to discredit protests but certainly bad for those hurt.
What I wrote before concerning Herman Cain wasn’t to really insult him, save to damn him with faint praise in saying he is a smooth operator (he may very well be elected president or vice president someday). Notice how carefully massaged Cain’s message was—and still is:

“the protesters don’t understand what America is about.”

Quite true, the protesters are younger, generally more sincere. The young don’t possess the guile in slick maneuvering that elders do. Youths don’t know much about diplomacy, public relations; youths may intuitively sense what outright propaganda is however the insidious ‘for public consumption only’ is more difficult to focus on.
Cain shrewdly didn’t say protesters are jealous, he said:

“I don’t know”, they might be jealous.

‘Envy’ would be valid because youths are justifiably envious of their elders owning the world. Remember, the war-protests starting circa 45 years ago were triggered by youth conscription, as soon as the Draft ended, protests ceased. At any rate, you can’t accuse me of being overly-optimistic, because the indictment would not hold up in court, it would be dismissed due to a technicality and I would beat the Rap.
Our family attorney spent many years in prison, so he knows all the ins & outs.

Posted by post-post  on  10/15  at  09:09 PM

“youths may intuitively sense what outright propaganda is however the insidious ‘for public consumption only’ is more difficult to focus on.”

Outright propaganda, e.g. war propaganda such as demonizing the Other as “Huns”, “Japs”, “gooks”, “ragheads”,
is distinguishable from the more insidious ‘for public consumption’ of,

“Occupywallstreet protesters are lazy punks”,

when the opposite may be the case: those of their general age (goes without saying older protesters are involved) group have so much energy they often don’t know what to do with it, plus their elders are misinforming/disinforming them; so youths frequently cannot make correct decisions relative to time and place—that is to say we can’t necessarily write here what ‘correct’ decisions are, can we? Futurism for example isn’t actually predicting the future, it is ‘playing it by ear’, making it up as we go along. Futurist writers aren’t really writers—they are typists

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/15  at  09:28 PM

@ post-post
When I say the wrong way, I don’t just mean causalities.  I mean that these protest may lead inadvertently lead to something similar to what Gorge Orwell depicted in 1984.  Though I may not go that far, it is still something I worry about.  As for Herman Cain, I never heard of him until now.  I also get the feeling that you are one of those people who look down on their elders and overly praises youth.  You seem to speak about elders as if they are malicious and suppressive.  Has it occurred to you that elders advise the youth against certain things because they have experienced those things and know the consequences of them?  Its not about owning the world (that power always passes from the middle generation who then become the ridiculed elders, to the generally disrespectful youth, who then become the middle generation).  It about warning against decisions and actions that the rebellious youth may regret in the long run.  And for the record, I,m twenty years old so I’m technically part of the youth. 

Posted by post-post  on  10/15  at  10:38 PM

Not to flatter you, christian, but the way you write it appeared you are in your late 30s- early 40s; you are wise beyond your 20 years. Please, wise up: America is a gerontocracy in a manner somewhat similar to the way foreign aid is funds transferred from poor in wealthy nations to rich in poor nations. There are many billionaires in America (the only country I know well enough to discuss) and other nations who get funds from the state. Naturally it is extremely complicated, and the more I read about economics the less sense it makes, yet elders because of their experience can and do manipulate youths like puppets; however if it is generational warfare you might be concerned with, you needn’t be, because class warfare is what counts—not in the Marxian sense but rather in an inchoate dissatisfaction. “[T]he generally disrespectful youth” as you correctly expressed it, have reason to be disrespectful, their elders are playing poker with cards up their sleeves, cards under the table.
George Orwell’s “1984” (published in ‘48) is long outmoded, now we have to learn to surf the choices of freedom, not the totalism of ‘1984’: things get dicey not so much when freedom is constricted, but when those who were used to regimentation quickly experience reversals of fortune to their being able to make choices—without having the experience or outside advice to make ‘correct’ choices. There is of course something to what you write above on [some] elders doing their best to advise—but their ‘best’ might not be saying much at all; youths do in fact get much bad advice from elders who are going by outdated experiences. America as a whole is stuck in the 1980s, and some old timers in some areas are living in the ‘50s. To illustrate this, here in the Midwest I’m afraid to talk to people, they open their mouths and the anticipation of what religious gobbledygook and outdated 1950s politics will emerge from those pie holes is distressing to the max.
BTW, “kultur” was a term coined by a German to devise a construct to describe large indefinables in our lives. When we say it “is all a matter of taste” we don’t know how right we are; it is a matter of bad taste, of the lowest common denominator!

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  10:40 PM

@Christian

Fear not, the end result is going to be something wholly unexpected for most.

Go explore Marshal McLuhan and Clay Shirky for an inkling of what’s to come.

This is something new (though it may take us to the end of the decade to fully realize it - we are well on our way and quickly accelerating).

I can say this: the 60’s didn’t have Twitter.

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  10:43 PM

How long did it take for this to become global?

Well that depends on whether you mark the man in Tunisia who set himself on fire as the starting point, or the beginning of the Wall St. Occupation as the starting point, or WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables as the starting point (which supposedly was one of the factors that led to the Tunisian revolts).

But we can ask ourselves this: when in the history of mankind has such things spread this fast and crossed nations/cultures with the same speed?

Do you get chills in your spine too?

Posted by iPan  on  10/15  at  10:57 PM

Here’s a good place to start:

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/16  at  02:54 PM

@ post-post
Concerning what you say about elders, I can’t help but repeat a phrase iPan told me when he/she commented on my opinions on the protesters; “generalize much?”  Also i must disagree with what you said about the elders advice being outdated.  Morals don’t change and every time someone tries to deviate from them negative consequences fallow.  Besides, when anyone tries to make a new set of morals they only have the original ones to base them upon.  Ironically, though I don’t know your age, when you told me to wise up, you sounded like those elders you were slamming (not to be disrespectful to you).     
As for what you said about 1984, I agree that freedom of choice, something that is well integrated in our society, makes the chance of a totalitarian system rising highly improbable.  However, if what was warned about in 1984 was outed dated we wouldn’t have governments like North Korea where it’s citizens are so brain washed that to question their leader is outside of their vocabulary.

@ iPan
Thanks for your encouraging comments.  I should remember that we do not know what is going to happen in the future and that we should not worry about it.  After all, what happens, happens.  I just hope we continue to uphold freedom and that we make the right choices. 

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/16  at  03:03 PM

@iPan Thanks for the reply and subsequent posts. I want to believe you, I really do. But I still don’t understand why we should expect the best ideas to prevail through the influence of social media any more than they did through TV. Twitter and Facebook also facilitated the English riots, remember? Just assuming they will seems to me know less intellectually lazy than assuming that everybody benefits from a free market. Reality is just more complicated than that, and consequently we need to remain vigilant. It seems to me that well-intentioned determination remains the key ingredient, whatever the technological context. And that’s what I love about the occupiers.

But yes, I do get chills too.

Posted by iPan  on  10/16  at  07:08 PM

But I still don’t understand why we should expect the best ideas to prevail through the influence of social media

Through selection. By vetting all possible ideas on the open internet, the successful ideas are the one’s that survive. The more open this process happens, the faster it happens.

Twitter and Facebook also facilitated the English riots, remember?

And near civil war in Egypt, and civil war in Libya. It’s going to get bumpy, we are not out of the woods yet.

When you look at the the world in terms of information and fractals, the patterns become apparent.

Old paradigms are crumbling because they are not fit for the internet landscape. They weren’t built with ubiquitous communication in mind. They were built on the paradigm of the industrial revolution.

The sad thing is that the champions of the old paradigm (i.e. the elite, the oligarchs, the hegemons, whatever you want to call them) cannot see this. They don’t realize that their system is mathematically unfeasible.

Autonomous networks of people using social media grow at an exponential pace. We’re building the Noosphere/Global Village.

There is no force on earth, short of extinction, that can stop this. The people will continue to transmit their experiences and stories to the internet. And awareness grows.

Most of the protesters themselves don’t even realize that they are incrementally working towards obsoleting the government itself. But they will.

I imagine it will take until the end of this decade to complete this process. It could be sooner, I’d love to be surprised, but that’s my conservative estimate.

The wide scale introduction to Brain Computer Interfaces will be the final nail in the coffin.

Billions of people connected to the world at all times, or at any time they desire.

To me, this is Ben Goertzel’s proclamation of “Obsolete The Dilemma” in action.

No need to overthrow the governments (though that will happen from time to time as well) - just outgrow them.

For every function that a government can perform, we can build a social media platform to replace it.

Posted by post-post  on  10/16  at  09:09 PM

christian,
The character Big Brother in ‘1984’ was modeled after Stalin, who was alive in 1948 when the book was published. Today, North Korea is one of the few remaining Stalinist states; totalism has faded. The future will be similar to ‘Clockwork Orange’, the opposite of ‘1984’: the latter is a depiction of a totalist regime; the former concerns an anarcho- nihilist future—an improvement over a totalist future unless one is on the wrong end of a club used in a beating.
If one has to choose, one wants to be the beater, not the beatee

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/16  at  09:56 PM

“The sad thing is that the champions of the old paradigm (i.e. the elite, the oligarchs, the hegemons, whatever you want to call them) cannot see this. They don’t realize that their system is mathematically unfeasible.”

I think some of them actually do. It’s like any transition: there are those who see it coming and adapt, and others who get left behind.

“By vetting all possible ideas on the open internet, the successful ideas are the one’s that survive.”

Successful in what sense? Which are the ideas that go viral? Which are the ones that gain traction? And why should the criteria be any different (i.e. less flawed, less pandering to our stone age, anachronistic impulses) than before? In fact, why wouldn’t technology make this problem worse? This has to be designed, not taken for granted. Neither blind optimism nor defeatist pessimism will get us where we want to go.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/16  at  11:29 PM

@ post-post
I hope your right about totalism fading and I certainly hope it fades in North Korea as well.  though I doubt that we will have absolutely no government in the future, seeing that’s what anarchic-nihilism is.  There will always be some kind of authority that we choose, weather it is a person, a group of people, or a supernatural being such as God.  We will just be able to be discerning about them (though the latter I neither question nor blame for anything being a non-denominational Christian; I know, same name as faith .

@ iPan
  Just as I said to post-post, I don’t think their will be a total abolition of government, just significant, and hopefully beneficial changes.  Also you must keep in mind that the internet, like pretty much all technologies, can be used for both good and evil depending on their users.  Though I can and did help civilians from repressed countries gain their freedom, it can also empower very angry people from relatively humble settings to incredibly terrible things such as coordinating a devastating terrorist attach or, if brain computer interfaces do become a reality, create a virus or something that could hack or even harm people at the core of their nervous system.  A recent example of this is how some form of malware infected military predator drones.  So if or, as you insist, when such interfaces occur, don’t think people would find a way to get around any digital protection that would be invented and especially don’t think that any advancement in technology will abolish any ill intent from people as has been fatally assumed throughout human history.
By the way, I forgot to ask you in my last post what your opinion was on the youth and elders.
 

Posted by iPan  on  10/17  at  01:36 AM

There is no evil.

There is only aesthetics.

Posted by iPan  on  10/17  at  01:57 AM

This is the Information War.

Get ready for weirdness.

Posted by iPan  on  10/17  at  02:32 AM

I hate that I can predict the world.

Please, free me by producing something unexpected…

this is hell…..I need novelty

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/17  at  07:48 AM

“There is no evil. There is only aesthetics.”
I’m a moral subjectivist as well, but that doesn’t mean that “good” or “evil” are useless concepts.

“This is the Information War. Get ready for weirdness.”
Not sure what you mean by Information War: who/what are the opposing sides? With you on the weirdness though.

“I hate that I can predict the world.”
You can’t. You didn’t predict this response word for word,, did you? (Or for that matter the timing of it.) You are constantly performing experiments to which you don’t know the outcome in advance. Do so mindfully, and you’ll get the novelty you crave.

By the way have you read Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. It speaks to a lot of what we’re discussing here in my view.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/17  at  08:13 PM

@ iPan
I humbly have to disagree with you about there being no evil, mostly due to the nature of of evil itself.  For starters, good and evil are not independent of each other.  Because one can do good simply for the sake of doing good, in spite of any personal sacrifices, but no one does evil or even disagreeable things simply for the sake of doing evil or what ever you may call it.  There is always some motive behind it.  That leads to my second point, good and evil are not independent of each other.  While goodness can exist on its own, evil acts like a parasite, taking something that in of itself is good and twists it into some that we find disgusting or horrible.  A good example of this is sex.  In of itself, sex is a good, even beautiful thing.  If is a very successful method of reproduction and it strengthens bonds between married couples.  However, people have taken sex and either twisted in countless unspeakable ways or made it so much the focus of their lives that they forget the things that matter most.  In other words, people have have taken something beautiful and corrupted it into something horrifically disgusting.  With all that said, the definition of evil is the desire of good things either by the wrong method, the wrong way, or too much.  If you want more of an explanation on this or on anything else I have talked about on these posts, I suggest read two books from C.S. Lewis; A Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man.  I’m not trying to be preachy or anything, I’m just trying to have you understand what I’m saying.
By the way, if you are interested in knowing my thoughts on trans-humanism or human enhancement, I left a comment under the article about the enhancement debate on Slate that was posted on this website.  Here’s the link <http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/munkittrick20110922>.

amazing how far off the topic of Wall Street protestors this went <). 

Posted by post-post  on  10/17  at  09:08 PM

“In other words, people have have taken something beautiful and corrupted it into something horrifically disgusting.”

You want to take the fizz off the soda; If sex is not horrifically carnal, then what is the purpose in being a guy?
To get back on-topic: if protests will forestall another Cheney-Rove administration from being elected a year from now, then God bless the dear souls of every single one of them—may all protesters ascend to Heaven at the time of their own choosing and remain in Paradise for as long as they please. Amen to that.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/17  at  09:29 PM

@ iPan
I forgot to mention, I agree with Peter Wicks that you cannot predict the future.  I fact, humans have a very poor track record when it comes to predicting what will happen in the future.  When may make educated guesses that turn out to be accurate, but we ultimately can never know with full certainty what will happen tomorrow and beyond.  This is because the future is like a winding road; it has many twist and turns.  It may be what you want it to be, or what you don’t what it to be, or something completely unexpected.  My advice is to focus on the present, learn from the past, and not worry about the future for as I said before, what will happen will happen. 

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/17  at  10:16 PM

@ post-post
You misunderstood me.  I not saying that sex shouldn’t it be fun (in fact it should).  What ever you and your spouse (assuming you have one) do is completely between the two you you.  What I’m saying is that we should not be so obsessed with it that nothing else matters or we do terrible things to get it.  Haven’t heard about child trafficking? Does carnal pleasure justify what those children have to go through?  There is more to life than just sex and though sex does plan an important role in marriage, The most important thing is the relationship between you and your spouse.
By the way, I have no Idea what you mean by protests forestalling another Cheney-Rove administration and sorry for having my post get off topic.

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/18  at  10:54 AM

“This is because the future is like a winding road; it has many twist and turns. It may be what you want it to be, or what you don’t what it to be, or something completely unexpected.”

I would go further: the future is an *ever-branching road*. There are multiple possibilities. The idea that one of them “will” happen and the others “won’t” is an illusion coming from our use of language, and tendency to extrapolate the apparent uniqueness of the past into the future.

“My advice is to focus on the present, learn from the past, and not worry about the future for as I said before, what will happen will happen.”
What would be the point in focusing on the present and (especially) learning from the past if not to create a better future? Or to be more precise: to steer our way towards the best futures.

Posted by post-post  on  10/18  at  07:04 PM

Christian, the only sex I’m interested in is with ‘bots. But whatever turns your crank- whatever floats your boat.

The protests are a healthy thing, and will shake things up.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/18  at  07:51 PM

@ Peter Wicks
“What would be the point in focusing on the present and (especially) learning from the past if not to create a better future? Or to be more precise: to steer our way towards the best futures.”
You make a good point.  We should try to steer towards the best future for everyone.  However, that does not mean we can absolutely control which direction the future will take.  Like I said in my last post, there is always a possibility of something totally unanticipated, or at least unexpected, happening that could force us to either head to a different future or take a different route to the same future (if there are any other options please share them).  Whatever the case, we should not be control freaks about our destinies (meaning we should be flexible enough to adapt to the unexpected and not have too high of expectations for the future) but always strive for a better future.  the protests are a good example of this.  Their are several ideas being tossed around about what kind of system the protesters want and don’t know where it is all going to end up.  All we can do is give our best inputs and hope that it will all be well in the end. 

Posted by post-post  on  10/18  at  08:14 PM

Though protesters have little idea about what sort of ‘system’ they want, they do have reason to protest. Read this; it says we doubled the size of the Afghan economy for $350 billion, however if we doubled it again—this time at a higher price—Afghanistan’s economy would still only be the size of Chad’s. This only includes the financial cost, not the casualties both civilian and military.
Protesters have every reason to protest even merely for the long-term situation in Afghanistan alone- because there is no light at the end of the tunnel:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263870/can-we-win-afghanistan-jim-lacey

Posted by Veronica  on  10/19  at  02:21 AM

“If one has to choose, one wants to be the beater, not the beatee.”

Ignoring the smiley face you made after this sentence, post-post, I’d have to disagree (unless, of course, I had the option of beating with a wet noodle.)

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/19  at  08:56 AM

Great comments…I LOVE the idea of beating with a wet noodle!
And Christian I fully agree: essential to expect the unexpected and be flexible, especially in these “exciting” times…

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/19  at  09:06 AM

@ post-post
I’ll I was saying that we don’t know which direction the Wall Street protesters are going to take.  I did not say that they didn’t have any reason to protest.  In fact, looking into it more, there are some things that I do agree with the protesters about such as government being too big.  It is just the radical ideas such as communism and socialism that I don’t support.

As for the having sex with “bots”, I can only respond by repeating what you said.  Whatever turns your crank-whatever floats your boat.  Personally I’m not so obsessed with technology that I would want to have sex with it.  I’m not saying your obsessed, i’m just expressing my opinions.

Posted by iPan  on  10/19  at  12:34 PM

I’ll I was saying that we don’t know which direction the Wall Street protesters are going to take.

I do.

In a more local sense, I think there is a possibility that these instances of protesting, at least in the US, will die out soon.

HOWEVER

They will continue to flare up in different parts of the world, and will eventually return here as well.

The frequency will increase.

And in the end, the result will be obsoletion/replacement of government as we know it by social media.

Posted by post-post  on  10/19  at  03:37 PM

christian,
it goes without saying there is no way protesters could know what ‘direction to take’—a polite way of writing they are clueless. The world becomes more complex & complicated, how would they know what to do especially since many of them are uninformed and inexperienced?
But they sure know something is wrong and how could they not? this demonstrates how disingenuous their opponents are in saying protesters are malcontents; if they were malcontents they would have protested like this ten years ago when the war(s) began. Today there is no reason NOT to protest.
The war will drag on, protests, as we all sense, will drag on in one form or another; a short little history of the last few years:
the Surge was done by transferring troops from Afghanistan to Iraq, and now we might be able to leave Iraq- however the option exists to return at some future date if things don’t, uh, work out. Afghanistan is at this time a complete unknown. We may leave Afghanistan, only to return rather quickly after the ‘country’ descends into a condition of bloodbath.
So reasons for pessimism do exist.
And christian, YOU brought up sex in this thread, you wrote of disgusting perversion in a thread on protests! perhaps being 20 YOU are obsessed with sex; which is only… natural. I’m only interested in ‘bot sex, but if I were 20 then it would be human sex—
yet not to an obsessive degree. Why, who would think males would have have an excessive interest in sex? perish the very thought.

Posted by iPan  on  10/19  at  04:34 PM

I feel prescient :D

Witness the power of the 21st century:

http://mashable.com/2011/10/19/occupy-wall-street-hackathons-2/

Groups of programmers gathered in three cities this weekend to build digital tools for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Several of those tools have already launched, and in many cases they’re being maintained by activists who’ve never held a sign in a park.
“I was waiting to see how I should be involved,” says Jake Levitas, who attended the San Francisco hackathon. “In the last week, I thought, ‘I know I’m going to dedicate a lot of time to this movement. I don’t know how, but I know I want to be involved.’”

When he found out about the hackathon through Facebook, he knew how he wanted to participate. Levitas, working with a small team at the event, started a design library called OccupyDesign. It’s a database of Occupy Wall Street protest placards, logistical signs and icons — with a strong focus on infographics. The idea, he says, is that it is harder to argue with facts presented visually than it is a talking point, and that a centralized visual library can help the protests make a strong impression. And he hopes this project will get more designers like him involved.

“Especially if they don’t think they can sleep on the street for a while,” he says, “they don’t know how they can plug in.”

Around the same time Levitas was working on OccupyDesign in San Francisco, Mark Belinsky was working on a decentralized decision-making platform that he calls OccupyVotes on the opposite coast. Belinsky, the president of a non-profit called Digital Democracy, used his time at the New York City hackathon to turn a platform he developed for the Jan. 25 protests in Egypt into a tool for articulating the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“It kind of struck me, of course we can use it here, because the media keeps asking what the protesters want,” he says.

OccupyVotes simply asks users to cast votes for one of two movement goals. For instance, “allow collective bargaining” or “enact mandatory limits/caps on campaign spending” are two options. Users, theoretically Occupy Wall Street activists, choose one idea or “I can’t decide” and are immediately presented with another choice. Every idea stays “above the fold” and anyone is free to add a new idea. The hope is that eventually this approach will sort out what the decentralized group as a whole finds important.

Since Belinsky sent OccupyVotes to Occupy Wall Street listservs, put up a Facebook page and started tweeting about it, the site has collected about 10,000 votes. So far “repeal corporate personhood” and “allow the Bush tax cuts to expire” are the most popular ideas and “another bailout” is the least popular. Soon Belinsky hopes to send volunteers with tablet computers into Zuccotti Park to collect votes from the protesters there.

Other hackathon attendees built a group texting app for on-the-fly coordination, a Q&A site for occupy organizers, a video-editing platform that doubles as an advertising platform, an app that can use multiple cellphones in a small area to amplify one person’s voice and offered suggestions for the Occupied Wall Street Journal‘s website. Their projects are in various stages of launch.

Matt Ewing, the organizer of the San Francisco hackathon, said he solicited ideas from Occupy listservs before the hackathon. Many of those ideas were among the six built by about 40 programmers during the event, but some came from the programmers themselves.

“I think we’ve built some powerful tools that when deployed will help grow the movement,” he says. “It’s a small part of a movement that is constantly getting bigger, but an important part.”

Posted by post-post  on  10/19  at  05:01 PM

...“It is just the radical ideas such as communism and socialism that I don’t support.”

They are outmoded, christian- so is capitalism; thus we have to make every mistake until we get it right. Marx himself wrote change comes after all other possibilities have been exhausted… unfortunately such is a sanitized way of writing it, if only real-life were as neat as scenarios on paper. The reality is we’ll botch it up time ‘n’ again, many casualties will occur; some families will win; some will lose; some individuals will win; others will lose. What else is new?

“when tomorrow is today
the bell may toll for some
but nothing can change
the shape of things to come”
—‘The Shape Of Things’
Max Frost And The Troopers

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/19  at  05:03 PM

post-post,
I only brought up sex as an example of some that is in-of-itself good but could be made into something bad, if not evil.  I’m sorry that it has led to something completely off the topic of protests.  To answer your question, if males, more broadly human beings, did not have an excessive interest in sex we would not have so much pornography and advertisements that suggest something sex related, even on a minor level.  It is true that the biological function of males is to pass on as many of their genes to the next generation as possible and the only way to do that is to have sex.  However, the point I’m trying to make is that we should practice temperance, self restraint so things like sex don’t become a huge distraction from our lives and the important things in them.  The same can be said about material thing that we could become attached with such as the internet, but lets drop this and focus on the topic of the Wall Street protest from now on. 

Posted by Hank Pellissier  on  10/19  at  05:42 PM

I agree with iPan’s suggestion above.  The marches last weekend were far larger in Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona, than they were in the USA - not by chance, Europe presently has even more trouble with its economies and its banking institutions.

I think the Occupy movement might be more active in Europe or even in places like South Korea, than in the USA, for a while.  But it will return here, if indeed it even subsides.  My understanding, through MoveOn.org, is that large rallies are planned for November 5th.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/19  at  05:59 PM

post-post,
I’m surprised that you don’t find Karl Marx, whose philosophies were written in the nineteenth century, to be outmoded (by the way, my English teacher commented that many people today seem to think that everything prior to facebook is outmoded/outdated). Forgive me if I’m wrong, but the way you describe people makes them seem like little more than a means to an end. 

Posted by post-post  on  10/19  at  06:01 PM

You’re quite bright for your age, christian, you know much more than some of us did at 20. But it is crucial to walk the thin line between optimism and gullibility. Judging by your comments you have what it takes, it might be a very rare gift, too. We shall see.
‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are interlinked. In this case, males being pigs about sex has populated the Earth. In other words if men were not such swine, we might not have succeeded as a species; good news for us and bad news for other species, as we have been at war with nature—still are.
Now, back on-topic…

Posted by iPan  on  10/19  at  06:41 PM

Yeah, back on topic.

Did you guys read the link I posted?

It’s like all of my predictions manifesting themselves. Ok, incrementally. But that’s ok.

Social media is absorbing the government. Bit by bit.

My primary prediction, is that this process will be complete approximately by the end of the decade.

We will not see the complete disappearance of “government” as we know it - instead, we will see people self-organizing, like they are doing here.

And in the process of doing this, through hands on practice, it will become apparent to these same people, that they can do whatever the government can do - self-police themselves, move resources around, reach consensus, ANYTHING - using social media.

We’ve watched this brew for years, from Google mashups in Africa, to the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, and now this.

And they keep happening at an exponentially increasing pace.

What hasn’t quite happened yet, is that people continue to think of the technology as a means to an end, instead of an end in itself.

In other words, people are using the technology to enhance their movements, with the goal of overthrowing a government, or changing the existing one. But they haven’t made the connection that by doing so, they are training themselves to permanently replace these systems using the very technology that they are using to challenge these systems.

And this is what Marshal McLuhan and Clay Shirky have been telling us all along.

This is the first real stirrings of the Global Mind/Village. The Noosphere. The cyber collective. It won’t slow down or take a back seat.

The next eight years are going to be strange indeed.

Posted by post-post  on  10/19  at  07:23 PM

You hit the nail on the head, christian: everything from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and the rest of it is largely outmoded. Disclaimer: the quote from Karl Marx was solely for illustration purposes and was in no way an endorsement of Marxism, dialectical materialism, Trotskyism, or the Baader Meinhof bund. I have never been nor am I at this time a card-carrying member of any Marxist and or Leninist organization.
It’s unfair occupywallstreet protesters are being lumped in by their opponents with Communists, when protesters are more oriented towards anarcho-syndicalism than Marxism-Leninism.
People being little more than a means to an end? in a darwinist world we may be no more than a means to an end, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as being means, or things—but perhaps we are, which is why I refer to escapism (call it transcendentalism) so often; a necessary escape from the pressures and unappetizing aspects of our darwinian meatgrinder existence.

Posted by iPan  on  10/19  at  07:30 PM

Here’s yet another article:

http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/OWS-The-Strategic-Brilliance-of-Facelessness-73530.html

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has sometimes been criticized for having no demands and no distinct leader. However, this is one of its strengths. Leaders can be discredited on an individual basis, though in the days before all of our new social and mobile technology, it may have been necessary to operate close to the center with leaders and manifestos. Social media does that work now.

Are you guys starting to see these patterns take shape through time like I do?

Posted by post-post  on  10/19  at  08:04 PM

“Are you guys starting to see these patterns take shape through time like I do?”

Yes.

“incrementally. But that’s ok.”

If one is on top; for those at the bottom it is not so okie-dokie how it changes so incrementally: that is the point and has always been the point.

Posted by iPan  on  10/19  at  08:46 PM

If one is on top; for those at the bottom it is not so okie-dokie how it changes so incrementally: that is the point and has always been the point.

Well, what I meant was that I don’t expect social media to take over completely over night.

In fact, I think it’s going to take around eight more years (though I would love it if it happened even faster - maybe the world will surprise me after all).

By “incrementally”, I also mean it won’t all happen in a single action, but will be the result of many, many such examples like the one’s I keep listing, all aggregating together over time until it reaches a point where people simply realize that they are doing the “government” thing all by themselves - without an actual government, at least as we know it today.

It’s exciting to watch it evolve - because the more we do it, the sooner we get away from all these problems of corruption.

This is how we build an open source egalitarianism. Thought impractical by many, but now that we have the technology to do it, it doesn’t seem so impractical anymore, does it?

Change is accelerating exponentially.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/20  at  08:41 AM

Interesting thoughts about the future of government.  However, before I accept the social media as my leader it should get red of any bias it has (and from what I have observed, the media has a lot of it).  It should not be leaning toward the left or the right or strictly for the religious and non-religious but still be respectful towards all sides.  Furthermore, if the global mind/village does occur, it should not try to impose itself on cultures that don’t have advance technologies or even want them.  If you want to know what cultures I mean, watch the BBC special Human Planet. 

Posted by iPan  on  10/20  at  01:43 PM

@Christian

The key is participation. Those who participate are part of the network. If you don’t participate, then you are not part of the process.

So, your point about cultures that don’t possess the technology is valid. The solution is to increase penetration of these technologies to those cultures.

Here’s another excellent article, that while focusing on business, it echoes the same process:

http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/2011/10/06/hypereconomics/?mid=50

Hypereconomics

What happens after we’re all connected?  When I asked that question, seven years ago, well over eighty percent of all Australians had their own mobile, and the bulk of the nation had signed up for broadband Internet access.  The answer led me on a journey through the future of media, education, politics, and now, economics.

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/20  at  02:59 PM

” Those who participate are part of the network. If you don’t participate, then you are not part of the process.”

So no rights for people who choose to opt out, then?

Posted by iPan  on  10/20  at  03:14 PM

So no rights for people who choose to opt out, then?

Well, I imagine that those who don’t participate in THE global network, will form their own wherever they live.

Isn’t voting the same way? If you choose not to vote-participate, then you have no effect on the outcome.

If you choose not to participate in society, then you have no effect on it.

Participation is the root.

And that’s the cool thing about these emergent networks. They require no external authority. Participate or not.

I imagine that the majority of people will choose to participate, because there are benefits to doing so.

Posted by post-post  on  10/20  at  07:00 PM

“It’s exciting to watch it evolve - because the more we do it, the sooner we get away from all these problems of corruption.”

Encouraging, and positive events do occur everyday, just for instance today Gadhafi went to that great gyro stand in the sky; hope Burt doesn’t mind if Gadhafi’s death is celebrated—not his death actually, but removing dictatorship one step at a time. One can mourn a dictator as a person but be relieved he has lost all control over events.
Now the task is to give guidance to Libyans without being imperialistic.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/20  at  07:17 PM

“the solution is to increase penetration of these technologies to those cultures.”
As I said in my last post, those cultures may not want those technologies.  They even be happier because of the absence of those technologies.  Think about it, they don’t have to worry about excessive e-mails, paying for electricity, spam and junk mail, digital virus and all the pains of having these technologies.  On top of all that, they actually interact with there world and other people in person while most of us in western society can hardly get off our laptops, i phones, etc .  Lets face it; If we were talking to each other in person we probably wouldn’t be able to talk as intellectually as we would want to.  We might even be getting into each others faces.  I’m not saying technology does nothing but harm to us, I’m just saying that it is not for everyone.  Though you do give the option to not participate in the global network (and looking further transcending biology), I worry that you may peer cultures and individuals into doing so (intentionally or otherwise). 

Posted by post-post  on  10/20  at  09:28 PM

“We might even be getting into each others faces.”

Of course we would, that is what you don’t comprehend; you are seeing it from the perspective of a young, somewhat innocent person projecting your decency on the outside world. Say you have a really cozy dinner with your family and you almost think the world is a warm, Christmassy place… such is very common. Nothing ‘wrong’ with it unless you become so delinked from reality you become similar to a pilot flying a plane solely by instruments, never glancing out the window to see if anything is a threat to the flight.
Please get it: things were no worse before the internet—yet no better. Christian, we are never going to live in a decent world- that’s from fairy tales, the Prince slays the dragon (representing evil) and takes the Princess to a castle where they live happily ever after. So Hollywood.
Sheesh, you have got to wise up!
The protests are a positive because America is out of touch, living in its 1980’s Reagan-fantasy world. I remember the ‘80s as a decade of change, not conservatism, so ‘You Can Never Go Home’ applies—because if the old-fashioned in America went back home to the ‘80s it would be surprised how it wasn’t what it appeared to be superficially.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/20  at  10:34 PM

post-post
I’m know that we don’t live in a decent world and that we never will.  In fact,  I’ve had a lot of fatalist views about the world and humanity itself (you don’t want to know what they are).  I just don’t want things to get worse.  Also, isn’t a decent world what trans-humanists expect to achieve with ever progressing technologies?  I’ve read many of the comments you guys post and felt like telling you to wise up and get back to reality.  You seem to expect that technology will solve most if not all our problems, everything in that occurred in the past is irrelevant to today’s issues, and that the protests will lead to new system that is free of corruption.  Well I got news for you.  No form of technology will change human nature or create a utopia, the past exists to help us avoid it’s mistakes in the future, and if history has taught us anything it is that corruption can occur in any system.
Sorry for my venting post-post.  I’m trying to be respectful to you but I feel like your just slamming me. 

Posted by post-post  on  10/20  at  11:29 PM

Protests will subside and then flare up because, as Coolidge said,
“the business of America is business”.
However it’s not so much that America is commercially oriented, it is becoming like that everywhere. No, there’s more but it is impossible to go into to any degree as it would take a web-rary to even begin. What bothers me about you, christian, is you are a smarter version of me at twenty, though even more innocent; your comment above is poignant:

“I worry that you may peer cultures and individuals into doing so (intentionally or otherwise).”

Kind of late in the day for this, isn’t it?

Your remark about horrid carnality was even more innocent. I don’t know one successful guy who doesn’t have mistresses, a ho-er or two, and a stack of XXX ‘Debbie Does Texas’ HD discs (naturally there’s some older guys who aren’t like that, a man in his ‘90s is concerned with Ensure & Metamucil, not Debbie & Texas). Despite what you wrote, “disgusting” carnality is in fact a necessary escape from the grinding pressures of living a conventionally successful life. Not to write of how your innocence is ‘wrong’ yet it is as hopelessly out-of-date as “I worry that you may peer cultures and individuals into doing so (intentionally or otherwise).”

Posted by iPan  on  10/21  at  08:03 AM

People need to learn that the advance of technology cannot be stopped.

There will be no relinquishment, so it’s a matter of adaptation for us.

This is completely natural. This is what organisms have been doing for billions of years.

Yes, it seems a bit weird that we are creating the environment that we must now adapt to through technology (“Forced the hand of evolution, we’ve become our own solution”) but that’s how it is.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/21  at  09:28 AM

post-post
first of all, it is not too late to not peer cultures.  That’s why I suggested seeing the BBC documentary Human Planet.  The things that most of those people can do “without” advanced technology is extraordinary.  Were pretty much wusses compared to them.  I suggest you look into Human Planet before you comment on this.
Secondly, I was hoping to drop the sex issue but carnality is not what makes people successful.  On the contrary, carnality often hurts a person’s reputation, especial if that person is already married.

iPan
I know that there are technologies that proved very helpful to us, but we shouldn’t be so dependent on technology that we don’t know how to live without it.  That why I worry about peering more “primitive” cultures into accepting advanced technology; they may lose the knowledge and skills they’ve perfect over hundreds of generations that allowed them to survive without advanced technology.  No matter what you guys think, you cannot ignore the possibility of technology failing us.  All it takes is a devastating natural disaster like an asteroid impact, a deadly global pandemic, or even a powerful high altitude EMP to through us back to the per-industrial age.  In a Darwinian sense, we could be come so specialized that we can no longer adapt to sudden changes.   

Posted by iPan  on  10/21  at  10:58 AM

iPan
I know that there are technologies that proved very helpful to us, but we shouldn’t be so dependent on technology that we don’t know how to live without it.

I take the view that there is no going back. It’s just not feasible.

If we take your argument to an extreme, then why not go back to living in trees?

No clothes, no cars, no houses. Nothing.

We are dependent on technology. This is not going to change.

I understand the desire for “simpler times”, but it just aint’ gonna happen.

This is what I mean when I say relinquishment is out of the question.

We can pine for the ‘good ole days’ all we want, but it will never come, so we might as well accept what’s real and learn to adapt to an ever accelerating technological landscape now.

As far as cultures that are drastically behind the technological curve, all I can say is I hope that the future advanced societies might leave them alone. More or less those who choose not to advance with the rest of the world may be allowed to live on a kind of reservation for ‘technological anachronists’.

This is my hope anyway, as I don’t want to see anyone destroyed.

But, I can say that the world as a whole absolutely will not relinquish technological advancement. It’s just not going to happen.

Personally, I see technological advancement as completely natural, and fitting with what life has done on this planet for the last few billion years. I tend to view biology itself as a type of technology, so there is no discontinuity in my view between the technology we create and the technology we are.

Posted by post-post  on  10/21  at  11:06 AM

christian,
your innocence is touching, but there is no way whatsoever to turn back now. None. Everywhere has been affected.

“All it takes is a devastating natural disaster like an asteroid impact, a deadly global pandemic”

Devastating natural disasters wont do primitives any good, either.

Posted by post-post  on  10/21  at  11:30 AM

“Sorry for my venting post-post. I’m trying to be respectful to you but I feel like your just slamming me.”

No, you are sharp for your age and someone merely needs to shake you by the shoulders- some of us wish we had been shaken up when we were young. You do have the Right Stuff and you live in the Right Times; now there is a glimmer.

“You seem to expect that technology will solve most if not all our problems, everything in that occurred in the past is irrelevant to today’s issues, and that the protests will lead to new system that is free of corruption. Well I got news for you. No form of technology will change human nature or create a utopia, the past exists to help us avoid it’s mistakes in the future, and if history has taught us anything it is that corruption can occur in any system.”

Technoprogressives don’t expect utopia or to change human nature, they hope to alter us and our substrate carefully yet proactively. Hard to describe (esp. by laymen) however it is sort-of ‘expect the worst but hope for the best’.
Today with Arab Spring and American OWS, even I’m getting a bit optimistic—so perhaps the End Times are not at hand. Will have to sell off the Armageddon & Tribulation stocks and buy shares in Transhumanist & Posthumanity Tech.
As soon as our family stockbroker is paroled from prison.

 

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/21  at  11:41 AM

“As far as cultures that are drastically behind the technological curve, all I can say is I hope that the future advanced societies might leave them alone. More or less those who choose not to advance with the rest of the world may be allowed to live on a kind of reservation for ‘technological anachronists’.”
I hope those societies are left alone too.  I’m not against technological progression, it has help save lives and make several tasks easier to accomplish.  I just hope we still have the capacity to get off our laptops, i-pads, etc, and enjoy the natural world which the less developed cultures seem to have a great appreciation of.  I also hope that where ever these protests go and however advance we become technologically that we still respect the natural and simple to the point where we are willing to preserve them.

post-post
“Devastating natural disasters wont do primitives any good, either.”
At least they are more likely to survive the after math of such disasters.  Who knows, maybe they still have knowledge worth teaching us that we could apply to our ever progressing society.  By the way, just because they are simpler does not mean they know less or are ignorant.  They just view the world differently.  Tying this to the Wall Street protests, it was mentioned that the protesters are a diverse group when it comes to opinions and viewpoints.  Isn’t that what allows progress to occur, sharing different ideas and opinions on things?  Throwing in the ideas and opinions of the less advance further diversifies the mixture.  Though it may be a stretch but maybe those ideas and opinions can help develop a system that economically benefits all and is less pron to corruption. 

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/21  at  11:50 AM

If my last post sounds like it is going in different directions, I’m just trying to have it tie in with the main topic of this page.

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/21  at  04:00 PM

iPan wrote: “I take the view that there is no going back. It’s just not feasible.”

As a matter of principle I dislike statements that imply that our options are limited. I want to believe that we could go back, if we wanted to. I even want to believe that we can, if we want to, go to some kind of Arcadian bliss, a utopia based on a mythological (and patently false) view of a past that never actually existed. Where we somehow manage to do without anything that obviously looks like “technology” (OK perhaps I’ll allow clothes).

Is this denial? One might think so. But for the moment I prefer to believe that we can do anything we want, if we have managed to muster the required degree of clarity, consensus and commitment. Free your mind!

Posted by iPan  on  10/21  at  08:35 PM

Here’s an excellent perspective on this from my friend /:set\AI

this is a different revolution - very different and strange- social networks have completely shifted the power paradigm of guns/money that has stood since the founding of Ur- but even the protesters using these new tools haven’t fully grasped it yet

instead of guns and money social networks have handed the power to the most POPULAR ideas and movements-

no one guesses it yet but money and guns are now OBSOLETE in sociopolitics! a popular growing movement needs no money! money is a means of procuring media and human resources to drive the movement- with social networks you already have global media saturation and if you need TV/print you don’t need to pay because if your cause is popular people with TV/print resources will DONATE them to you- instantly- as you need them- the same for food/supplies/intel - I have actually heard geezers on Fox news say that the Occupy protests will dissapate when the cold hits- they don’t realize that social media allows a crowd to refresh itself by rotation- and shelter provided exactly when and where it is needed from a simple tweet-

GUNS are obsolete- a military or police state needs PEOPLE to build/maintain/operate weapons and execute battle plans- in the past your soldiers would be state propaganda fed minions- but now soldiers and police officers are free citizens like everyone else- and they have mobiles with social media apps - if an old corrupt power really tries to pull something like Tiananmen Square today many of the soldiers would be sabatouers and moles- hackers from inside and out would cripple their intel and comms- millions would be ready for monkey warfare at targeted locations by just a few-

for the last few years every populist uprising that has used the new social media has resulted in an explosion through the network- vastly amplifying the political impact- wherever people PUSH the network RESPONDS and accelerates it - the Occupy protesters and Wall St both still think this is the powerless masses complaining to the powerful- but it’s really the NEW power coming to arrest the reigns from the OLD

Posted by iPan  on  10/21  at  09:34 PM

Speaking of gear that protesters need, can someone donate a few hundred of these to their favorite Occupation?

http://www.gizmag.com/vertical-bed/20209/

Brooklyn based inventor Jamie O’Shea has created the Vertical Bed, which is exactly that- a “bed” that will allow you to sleep vertically. Whilst the awkward contraption doesn’t look as comfy as what we might imagine a bed to be, it does logistically allow a person to sleep in a standing position ... and no, we’re not sure why either.

And some of these too:

http://www.zioneyez.com/#/home/

Introducing the ZionEyez. Glasses with a built-in 720p HD video camera.

It doesn’t end there. There’s also a microphone, Bluetooth and WiFi, and 8GB of built-in storage. Battery life is a pretty decent three hours.

Posted by iPan  on  10/21  at  10:11 PM

OMG

I haven’t been to the central streaming hub in about 24 hours

http://www.occupystream.com/

There are now 55 streams - on this site alone (there are many more sites too, but this one has 55 all conveniently in one place).

If what I’ve been attempting to explain is difficult to understand, then just look at this one aspect:

55 streams - many of them often live (Cleveland, Ohio - getting arrested - as I just checked a few minutes ago) - available to the entire world to watch.

Think about that.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/21  at  10:18 PM

“instead of guns and money social networks have handed the power to the most POPULAR ideas and movements-”
what are these popular ideas and movements currently.  I may know some of them already but I’m curious if there are any others.

Posted by Peter Wicks  on  10/22  at  04:54 AM

@iPan If these developments are inevitable why do we need to support them? Just to be on the winning side? My own answer to this question is two-fold:

1. It’s not inevitable, but on the whole it’s good.
2. It might turn bad, and those of us who are in on it from the beginning are more likely to be able to ensure that it stays good.

Posted by post-post  on  10/22  at  10:40 AM

Christian, per your question on social movements today, don’t know—am too backward-looking!

“Isn’t that what allows progress to occur, sharing different ideas and opinions on things?”

I’m nostalgic, your morality is 20th century. Apology for having to refer to “horrifically disgusting” again however it is emblematic of your looking back, people now eat perversion for breakfast. Naturally you have your ethics and no one can say you are incorrect yet it can be said it is not 21st century. Perversion is now integral, not superficial. If straights want to play their game (and life is a game, albeit a serious game) they have to let rebels play theirs’ when the number of the rebels reaches a quantity wherein they are a force that cannot be denied; a plurality, say. As per your quote on carnality, the successful guy today not only dresses for success- he undresses for success. I bring this up because being nostalgic, I know from where I speak concerning holding onto the outdated. Being outmoded in our thinking is ‘alright’ if we admit to ourselves we are similar in effectiveness to temperance leagues in 1911 fighting quixotically against alcoholism.
Think of life as a watchtower, your family wants to live its life as it is accustomed and feels correct in doing; they lock their doors, they keep an eye cocked on what is going on outside of their ‘watchtower’. But you don’t want to be pollyannish, or at least not especially so. As you want to walk a thin line between optimism and gullibility, you also want to walk a tightrope stretched between idealism and pragmatism. Your family is obviously solid and idealistic. However they don’t want to be out of touch (non-pragmatic) by insulating their minds from what is occurring on the outside. Spirituality is ‘okay’ if it is grounded, not airy-fairy, because the mind plays too many tricks on itself; don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s books was despite his peyote haze strong and steady in saying “a man must be deliberate in all things”. Of course we all slip from our tightropes- but we try hard not to fall.
You appreciate indigenous peoples and are respectful, just keep a balanced perspective of their situations. In many ways the simple life is good; the well off modernist/postmodernist lives the good life but hurries to get the car out of the repair shop to make a 2:30 appointment, then a meeting, picks up the child at day care, then rushes around the supermarket to collect dinner. While the indigent merely holds onto life one day at a time.
The primitive life is not the better life, it is the simpler life. The caveat is, when appendicitis kicks in or gall bladder spasms, kidney stone attacks, etc., etc., then there had better be a physician around not too far away- or Big Trouble. Gum/teeth problems emerge and a crucial need for a nearby dental surgeon arises. The primitive had better hope the local witch doctor has some good potions and powders, or else Big Pain.
The primitive life may not be red in tooth & claw but it can be nasty short and brutish.
Ethics are dicey, yet aesthetics can be comprehended: two hours listening to Mozart in Vienna is much the same as two hours of listening to tribal drums in an impoverished (or destitute) locale in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/22  at  01:29 PM

post-post
I fail to see certain philosophies as “outdated” just because they existed in the past.  As a matter of fact, many of those philosophies and morals actually withstood the test of time and they wouldn’t not have done so if they weren’t accurate and relevant to each generation. I can easily imagine you saying the same thing about the same philosophies and morals if you were living in the nineteenth century.  the best analogy I can give is a child being rebellious to his/her parents.  A child can easily be fed up and annoyed the strictness and morals the parents impose on him/her and find it more fun to do what the other kids are doing even though the parents say it is wrong. Then the child goes though his/her youthful, getting scars and buries from some of his/her decisions along the way, experiences college, gets married, and has kids of his/her own.  When those kids start to become rebellious towards the same things in the same way as the child did, he/she realizes after all his/her experiences and mistakes that the parents were right all along (seeing you are only interested in sex with ‘bots’, you might not fully understand this).  So morality never really changes as time passes and just because everyone else is doing it does not mean it is okay because a lot of things that we want aren’t really that good for us.  As a Christian I was raised with the philosophy of living in the world but not of it.  I admit that I sometimes get annoyed with what my parents teach me and stray away from such things and each time I’ve done so it has cost me personally.  In fact, many of the things I’ve said about carnality is base on my personal experiences and I’m deeply ashamed of it.  So again, don’t call something outdated just because its been around for a long time and don’t think something is okay just because it is generally accepted by others.
As for the medical problems of indigenous people, medicine is probably the only exception I would make to technology intruding on primitive cultures.  I just don’t want them to loose there lifestyles and skills if they don’t want to loose them (I say this because there may be some cultures that want advance technology though for most I find that unlikely).     

Posted by post-post  on  10/22  at  01:55 PM

“(seeing you are only interested in sex with ‘bots’, you might not fully understand this)”

Had plenty of the real thing in the ‘70s—but then so did Everyone. I’ve posted 4x today so best would be if you want to continue this, write:

p0stfuturist@yahoo.com
(with a zero after the ‘P’, not a high-case o).

What would be better is if you would maybe plan to write a piece someday for IEET, since you are one of the youngest to comment here- plus ahead of the curve for your age.

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/22  at  03:08 PM

post-post
Though our debate is interesting it is probably best if we drop it and try to focus on the topic of the page from now on.  Also, as much as I would like to write a piece for IEET, i wouldn’t know how to submit it to this site and I don’t feel like enough of an authority or expert to do so (assuming that is required).  I’ll keep your email address in mind in case I do want to continue our debate.  Oh, and thanks for your complement.

Posted by Mike Treder  on  10/22  at  03:50 PM

Christian (and anyone else reading this)—We welcome reader-created articles for our blog, although of course we do not automatically accept everything that is submitted.

If you would like more information on writing for the IEET, please contact me directly at mtreder@ieet.org

Posted by post-post  on  10/22  at  04:40 PM

A project comes to mind: christian could canvass his peers (18-25), to discover which have heard of h+, which would be interested in it, and which are already interested. Something along those lines; doesn’t of course have to be that subject, but such a method is a way for the article to come about.
Since you want us back on-topic right now, say a piece might be about what your peers think of OWS, what social (and material) change they want.
I’d do it, however it may be better to encourage youth, 20 is a great age to start—one isn’t a teenager anymore, but hasn’t turned into
“a hardened taxpaying beetle” (Jean Shepherd, ‘In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash’).

Mike, we old vampires need new blood at IEET

Posted by christian corralejo  on  10/22  at  09:10 PM

post-post
I like the latter idea the best and I may know how to get opinions for it.  It all depends if I can fit it into my schedule.  We’ll see how it goes.
By the way, I first heard about h+ from this website but I don’t know that much about it.

Posted by post-post  on  10/23  at  12:28 AM

“I first heard about h+ from this website but I don’t know that much about it.”

Yet, how many 20 year olds know about h+? they might have heard about it but never looked into it. In some ways it was worse for Boomers: for instance when I was 30, or so, thought from vaguely hearing about it that transhumanism was a Japanese robot-missile fad, perhaps. Or “Transformers” or something. It appears youth today are less informed of the lessons of the past, but are savvier. Besides, who necessarily wants to enjoy history, the past is pretty gnarly—what with Vietnam and WWII.
So (to finally get back on-topic) what so many naysayers do not want to know about the protests is that protesters can’t go by what they are told, because, obviously, there is quite a bit of inertia involved; it is only natural to want the status quo—it is comfortable. And the status quo, obviously, means a restriction in the flow of information. If youth and others who are out of the loop are kept too uninformed, they can’t make adequate decisions; thus they can’t be the plugged-in citizens they are told to be. It’s not merely malice, it is also confusion and inertia. A lot of strong people exist, though, if they can still function pretty well with such bad religion, bad politics, bad taste stuffed into their heads; gives me the dry heaves just thinking about it.

Posted by iPan  on  10/23  at  04:33 PM

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/22/semper-fi-occupy-marines-bringing-reinforcements-to-occupy-the-nation/?mid=50

Semper Fi: Occupy Marines Bringing Reinforcements To Occupy The Nation

What began as the gathering of just a few US Marines has now become a major organized movement to get Marines and military personnell of all branches to Occupy America nationwide. You can thank Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas for that. His actions last week have inspired service men and women across the country to take a stand for the American people and join the Occupy protests.

Posted by Kris Notaro  on  10/23  at  07:04 PM

The Marines may have good intentions, but the last thing we need is patriarchal military style “leadership”. It may well be a rude awaking when the Marines find out what true consensus/direct democracy looks like.

As Starhawk put it in Webs of Power “Direct democracy, horizontal organizing, nonhierarchical structure – these are the key aspects of our movement. Putting them into practice is an art that requires a shift in our organizational modes as well as in our thinking.” It would be nice however to see the Marines use their “expertise”, not “leadership” in helping protesters get through the winter…

Posted by post-post  on  10/23  at  09:05 PM

Something to look forward to is Occupy the Conventions next summer.

The critics of OWS don’t get it: what choice do protesters have? wait until 2013 when possibly another George Mush administration is elected, and then protest? that’s merely putting it off for 15 months. If Obama is re-elected he’ll be hamstrung—Obamacare will continue to be chipped away at.
Obama could throw in the towel and not run again next year, but that means his moving to Chicago; or, if some had their way, to Parchman Farm to chop cotton.

Posted by iPan  on  10/24  at  01:39 PM

There are reports that police are beginning to support and join the protesters.

Hegemons: you’re move

Posted by iPan  on  10/24  at  01:48 PM

Now it’s definitely the hip thing to do for IEET

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/10/24/hungry-for-jobs-and-for-change-scientists-join-the-occupy-movement/

Hungry for Jobs and for Change, Scientists Join the Occupy Movement

Posted by Mike Treder  on  10/24  at  01:53 PM

Check out this link.

The website says “Police in support of the 99% - Police in America are part of the 99 too” #OccupyPolice

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